Blender 2.78 Released, Available PPA For Ubuntu / Linux Mint

Blender 2.78 is Released, Install on Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 15.10, ubuntu 15.04 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS via PPA

Blender is an open source application for creating professional 2D/3D graphics, models and animation on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. The truth is that Blender is targeted at advanced users and enthusiasts who know what they are doing. However, new users can find comprehensive documentation and tutorials on the official website, which will help them to get started with Blender.

Features at a glance
It provides a fully customizable Interface, undo support on all levels, anti-aliased fonts with international translation support, a built-in text editor for annotations, support for editing Python scripts, fully scriptable UI with custom themes, and a consistent interface across all platforms. The application can be used for physics and particles, shading, real-time 3D and game creation, imaging and compositing, raytrace rendering, rendering, animation, solids modeling, and character modeling.

The Blender Foundation and online developer community are proud to present Blender 2.78!

In this release:

Cycles: Cycles now supports rendering spherical stereo images for VR.
Grease Pencil: Reworked to be similar to other 2D drawing softwares.
Alembic: Initial basic support in Blender.
Improvements to Bendy Bones for Easier and Simpler Rigging.
Eleven new add-ons.
And: 100s of bug fixes and other improvements!

What News on Blender 2.78 :

Grease Pencil

Dev-gp-newbrushes.jpg
New design and complete overhaul, including:
Easy layer management.
Ability to have multiple colors and thickness values per layer.
Stroke quality improvements.
Different color saturation in the same stroke.
Improved Fills – Support for Concave Shapes.
Parenting a layer to any object, armature or bone.
And more!

Alembic

Initial implementation in Blender.
Basic Alembic support through import and export operators.
Data streaming through cache constraints and modifiers.

Cycles Renderer

Cycles 2.78 spherical stereo.jpg
Rendering spherical stereo images for VR is now supported.
Multiscatter GGX mode for the glossy and glass BSDF nodes.
Experimental feature: Improved Subdivision and Displacement system.
Vertex color, weight and normal support for point density textures.
Hair rendering speed up / memory use improvements.
OpenCL devices now support float4 textures (e.g. HDR textures).
Added support for NVidia GTX 1060, 1070, 1080 GPUs.

How to Install Blender 2.78 on Ubuntu / Linux Mint using manual download :

To Install Blender 2.78 on Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus, Ubuntu 15.10 wily werewolf, Ubuntu 15.04 vivid Vervet, ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr (LTS), Linux Mint 17.1, Linux Mint 17.2, Linux Mint 17.3 and other Ubuntu derivative systems, open a new Terminal window and bash (get it?) in the following commands: